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Overstock.com CEO runs WSJ ad mocking indictment of SAC Capital

A quick word of advice: Never anger Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne. If you do, he might take out a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal to mock you:

That’s what Byrne did when he went after SAC Capital founder Steve Cohen, whose firm was indicted on five counts last week for allegations of insider trading. Cohen himself was not indicted, but is facing civil charges related to the case. Suffice to say that things are looking pretty terrible for Cohen and SAC.

Enter Byrne to kick a man when he and his billion-dollar hedge fund are down.

“In a typical short sale, the investor borrows stock and then sells it to someone else at, say, $100 a share. When the lender wants the stock back, the investor buys it from yet another person, and if the price has gone down to $80 a share, pockets the difference of $20. In naked short selling, the investor never borrows the stock in the first place, but hopes that its short position will cause the price of the stock to fall, essentially ganging up on the company.”

The ad pretty much speaks for itself (however petulantly), and serves as proof of the initial point: Never anger Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne.